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Janet Napolitano: ‘Core’ areas impacted

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano used a gesture of despair — not words — to communicate her feelings about the sequester.

Asked Tuesday about the impact the $1.2 trillion in cuts — including $85 billion this year — would have on the department, the former Arizona governor buried her head in her hand, drawing laughs from a crowd at the Brookings Institution.

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Napolitano on anti-terrorism, sequester: ‘Awfully tough’

“I have been in government service a long time, a long time, 20 years almost,” she said after delivering a talk on the state of the Department of Homeland Security 10 years after its creation. “I have never seen anything like this. It will have to affect our core, critical mission areas.”

President Barack Obama’s administration has deployed Napolitano and other Cabinet secretaries to publicize the impact of $1.2 trillion in cuts — $85 billion of which will come this year — as they try to convince Republicans to eliminate the sequester with a mixture of targeted cuts and revenue increases. Republicans have accused Napolitano and the rest of the administration of inflating the impact of the cuts.

“It’s the equivalent, in hours, of 5,000 Border Patrol agents,” she said. “It means less overtime and the ability to hire port officers, so longer lines there. It means really the same at the TSA. So longer lines there.”

She also chided Congress for simultaneously demanding she devote more resources to border security and doing nothing to avert the cuts. “Trying to do both at the same time is really an impossible task,” she said.